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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   793 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Anyone else feeling particularly cyberpunk?

Even normies online are talking about 'clankers' (humanoid robots out in the wild, not ASIMO scripted performances). I'm giving vague orders to Claude Code and watching it go. People are actually having relationships with digital waifus like Ani (not in the news media sense like 'Japanese man marries hologram girl but company is discontinuing the service' but in a more organic sense). The most valuable company in the world is a near-equivalent of 'US Robotics' from the Asimov novels.

Feels like there's been a step change in just the last few weeks.

I felt this a couple months ago. Ozempic, self-driving cars, LLMs, humanoid robots, and Mars-capable spaceships all in the past 3 years. We're in a new era, no getting around it.

Be remiss to mention the Chinese Cities really leaning into the aesthetic. Especially with the drone shows and the round robot cops.

One wonders how much of that is 'chicken/egg' though. We expect the future to look brightly lit and with glowing colors everywhere because a lot of scifi media depicted it as such.

We expect the future to look brightly lit and with glowing colors everywhere because a lot of scifi media depicted it as such.

I'm reminded of how so many dashboards and such use blue light (when red would be much better for nighttime!) because red was "dated" due to its use in Sci-fi (which was because it was the obvious choice of the military).

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